Rational of the project

In daily services there are many organisations involved in the process of education, counselling and employment for young people: Adult Education, VET, municipalities, PES, NGOs, etc. All these organisations use their own methods for career counselling and job placements. Since there is no coordination between them, the same guidance services are provided to one person several times or good services are offered at wrong moments. Moreover, in most of EU countries there is lack of professional standard and training for the professionals in the area of career counselling.

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Annual Growth Survey (AGS) from 2014 shows that the unemployment among young adults within the age 18 – 30 years is one of the main socioeconomic problems in the European Union since economic regression 2009. It reached 23.4 %-more than twice as high as the adult rate, with some 5.7 million young people affected. Young people that have only completed lower secondary education bear the highest risk of unemployment. In 2012, the EU average youth unemployment rate was 22.8 %, but reached 30.3 % for low-skilled youth.

In Communication “Moving Youth to Employment” 2012, the Commission states that the main problem regarding youth employment is a weak school-to-work transition. This depends on 2 reasons: a)employers are not willing to invest in future workforce and are usually focusing on current needs of the company; b)there is a lack of cooperation/coordination between different stakeholders in the region working with education, counselling and employment of young adults. The above makes career counselling services ineffective and job placements are not adapted to individual education and capacity as well as to regional employment needs.

IGMA3 aims to respond to this challenge by delivering a methodology as well as resources for stakeholders working with young adults that will also include job placements strategies and know-how for changing the attitudes of the employers. Additionally it will provide stakeholders with a distance training course through Moodle system. Finally IGMA3 aims for professionalisation of adult education staff working with career counselling and job placement of young adults.

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igma3 Objectives

igma3 main aims are:

Adaptation of methodology to the needs of young adults and resources of the stakeholder networks working with this target group.
Enrichment of the methodology with successful job placements strategies and know-how for changing the attitudes of the employers.
Development of distance training course for stakeholder networks through Moodle system.
Professionalisation of adult education staff working with career counselling and job placement of young adults.

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The accessibility of young adults to employment through engagement of the whole regional stakeholder networks (including employers) into guidance process in order to offer reality-based tailored learning/career opportunities to young adults is a prerequisite for the solution of the above challenges. The partnership of igma3 project has a long experience of working with integration of young adults to the labour market though education/career counselling. In 2011 five partners of this project started igma project (www.integrationagent.eu) for development of methodology for integration of immigrant into labour market through effective cooperation of regional stakeholder networks. In igma2 project the curriculum for training of regional networks was developed.

The innovative character of igma3 project is that the igma methodology will be further-developed and integrated into policy levels in the partner countries through:

Adaptation of methodology to the needs of young adults and resources of the stakeholder networks working with this target group.
Enrichment of the methodology with successful job placements strategies and know-how for changing the attitudes of the employers.
Development of distance training course for stakeholder networks through Moodle system.
Professionalization of adult education staff working with career counselling and job placement of young adults. [/read]

Impact Envisaged

The impact of introduction of igma3 methodology in the regional stakeholder networks will lead to better opportunities for job placements of young adults based on their needs and capacities. Moreover, the cooperated efforts of stakeholder networks will result in transparency and efficiency on the system level in regards to career counselling and employment of young adults.

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There are 2 main target groups in the project:

PRIMARY includes adult education organisations, counselling services, public organisations working with employment and employers/ employer associations.

SECONDARY includes young adults aged 18-30 especially those who are long-term undemployed or represent disadvantaged groups having longer distance to the labour market (physically disabled, early school leavers, immigrant, low-skilled)

Impact on primary target groups:

Professionalization (personal and career development) of staff working with counselling of young adults at adult education organisation and other relevant stakeholder organisation
Professionalization of services to the young adults by the stakeholder networks
Improvement of administrative routine in career counselling allowing managing bigger workloads more effectively
More effective career guidance and work placement opportunities for young adults aged 18-30 which in a long term will promote decrease of the youth unemployment in all partner countries.

Impact on secondary target groups:

Facilitation of the learners in a learning process through a flexible igma3 methodology adjusted to their needs and capabilities. This will specially improve opportunities of young adults from disadvantaged groups, as immigrants, physically disabled or early school leavers to find the way to education/employment taking into consideration their needs, strong sides and also hindrances.
Improved opportunity to education with strong focus on further employment which is leading to decrease of unemployment of young adults.

Secondary target group is not directly involved in the project activities as the goal of the project is to improve services provided to them. However, they will be a part of the training activities and included into the regional stakeholder networks in order to represent own interests and needs. The methodology will be developed together with them rather than for them. In a long-term perspective the improvement of services will lead to improvement of counselling procedures for this target group which will lead to better employment opportunities and social inclusion. the experience shows that empowerment of the target group is a good initiative only if there are available opportunities at a system level to take care of the individuals. That is why igma3 will focus on changes at a system level.

Impact on target sectors of adult education, career counselling and employment of young adults will be a promotion of:

lifelong learning and adult education as a part of formal education
the adult education as a way for young adults for entering labour market
innovation and new technologies (Distance training courses)
networking and cooperation between different organizations and regions for more effective and transparent process of resource management in the regions
common standard for in-service training of counsellors/coaches working with education/employment and counselling of young adults at different stakeholder organisations
attractiveness and high status of counsellor/coach profession in all partner countries

Generally it will lead to:

Improved practices in the areas of education and counselling of the young adults into labour market. This will also increase the labour market relevance of the learning provisions offered for young adults which promotes reinforcement of cooperation between adult education and labour market.
Enhancement of the commitment of the regional authorities and other stakeholder organisations in the qualitative development of the adult education. [/read]